Leon Trotsky on H. G. Wells as Philistine

“What a bourgeois he is! He is a Philistine!” he repeated, and raised both hands above the table, laughed and sighed, as was characteristic of him when he felt a kind of inner shame for another man.

SOURCE: Trotsky Leon. “The Philistine and the Revolutionary” (April 6, 1924), in Lenin (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1925.) From an account (disputed by Wells) of Wells’s meeting with Lenin in the winter of 1920-21.

We were all surprised when, not so long ago, Bernard Shaw—such a witty writer!—informed us that Marx had long ago been superseded by Wells’s great work on universal history. [1]

1. I must confess that until Bernard Shaw’s letter I had not even known of the existence of this book. Afterwards I acquainted myself with it—I cannot in good conscience say read it because an acquaintance with two or three chapters was quite enough to stop me wasting any more time. Imagine a complete absence of method, of historical perspective, of understanding of the interdependence of the different facets of social life, and of scientific discipline in general and then imagine a “historian” burdened with these qualities roaming far and wide over the history of a few millenia with the carefree air of a man taking his Sunday stroll. Then you will have Wells’s book, which is to replace the Marxist school. — L.D.T.

SOURCE: Trotsky Leon. Leon Trotsky’s Writings on Britain, Volume 2: Where is Britain Going?; based on (1975?) Collected Writings and Speeches on Britain: In Three Volumes by Leon Trotsky, edited by R. Chappell and Alan Clinton. London: New Park Publications; New York: distributed by Labor Publications, 1974. This excerpt from Chapter IV: The Fabian “Theory’ of Socialism.

11. V. I. Lenin

The high point of Wells’s visit to Russia in 1920 was his audience with Lenin; in his book on the Russian trip, he calls this chapter “The Dreamer in the Kremlin.” After Wells left, Lenin is supposed to have exclaimed “What a bourgeois he is! He is a Philistine!” And then, says Trotsky, he “raised both hands above the table, laughed and sighed, as was characteristic of him when he felt a kind of inner shame for another man.” *

* Leon Trotsky, Lenin (New York, 1925), p. 173.

SOURCE: Wells, H. G. Journalism and Prophecy, 1893-1946: An Anthology, compiled and edited by W. Warren Wagar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 329. Editor’s prefatory note to II: Portraits: 11. V. I. Lenin, pp. 329-336. The original source for this portrait is Wells’s Russia in the Shadows, pp. 145-50, 152-67. See also reference below.